Low Low Tides
2027 DATES
April 9–10
April 20–22
May 6–11
June 4–10
July 3–9
We’re harvesting seaweed during low, low tides in 2027! Join us for seaweed, clams, and all the rest:
Join Smithereen Farm and other curious people for a week or weekend of learning, harvesting, processing, and eating together. We will cover the ecology and biology of the seaweed ecosystem, hand-harvest techniques, regulations, drying, processing and culmination of the wild algae species that abound in our area.
Harvesting, drying, recipes, ecology, and natural history are all part of the Low Low Tides adventure. Downeast Maine is famous for our 22-foot tides, and the cold Labrador current creates extraordinary algal abundance.
How it works:
We meet during the most extreme low tides of the year to harvest seaweed. You may attend as either a Harvester or a Learner. Both are unique and special experiences!
Harvesters get hands on and waist-deep with the seaweed harvest. This is the most immersive way to experience Low Low Tides. Harvesters are welcome at every Low Low Tides event and stay for the duration of the harvest and help with every aspect. They also have the opportunity to get paid to sell their harvest to Smithereen Farm at the end of the week. Harvesters must obtain a Supplemental Seaweed harvest license from the Department of Maine Resources. Learn more about obtaining your permit here.
Learners come for just one day of Low Low Tides to learn about the seaweed harvest process. Learners do not handle seaweed. Come as a leaner to dip your toe in the process and see how we do it all! Learners are welcome exclusively at the July harvest.
Low Low Tides is a format we have created to welcome people into the magical world and community of seaweed with caring harvesters and passionate seaweed advocates, with shared meals, lectures, films and other ‘ alongside’ educational programming. Attendees will learn a lot about the natural history, ecology and hand-harvest techniques of our wild seaweeds. They will also learn about Smithereen Farm's value-added processing and our approach to ecological wild food economies. Seaweed harvesters will have the opportunity to sell their harvest to Smithereen Farm at the end of the program.
We are led once again our harvest captain Kacie Loparto, a local seaweed harvester with decades of experience.
More about our unique tides:
Spring tides are the most extreme of the year. They expose the rocky ecosystems of the lower inter-tidal where edible seaweeds lie glistening in the early morning light (even in August!). The incredible ecosystem of rockweed is exposed at every low tide and we encourage you to go bathe in its bubbling glory—but the edible kelps are harvested as tender teenagers in the colder months. If you are serious about edible seaweeds, join us early in the year.
Cobscook Bay’s extraordinary diversity and marine productivity is a product of these massive tides, the cold waters, many rivers, forested slopes to the sea and many embayments lined with eelgrass and rockweed beds–nurseries of juvenile fish and crustaceans, phytoplankton and the microscopic larval phases of marine foodweb.
In other segments, we look upstream and downriver to explore the landscape of our home region of Downeast Maine. We bring you episodes on ALEWIVES, BERRIES, CIVIC HALLS, and SEAWEED. Immerse yourself in a multi-media learning experience with short films, audio interviews, and collected articles and images that inform an approach to ecological farming, rural enterprise, and coalition building.
Life begets life: elvers, alewives, scallops, clams, worms, periwinkles, mackerel, mussels, crab, lobster–we have the most diverse fisheries of the whole state of Maine here in Washington County. Historically of course, it was the herring that drove our economy–the humble sardine canned by the millions by hard working women working long hours in cold conditions. Thanks to the Labrador current, the water is still cold, and a few of our grande old sardine buildings are still standing. We welcome you out in it to experience a place unique on the Atlantic coastline, still home to all its endemic wild fish species–edible, abundant and relatively unpolluted, and the beautiful towns and people who love her.
We bring our harvest baskets in the dawn light–many hands make quick work of the short harvesting window before the ocean comes back to cover up her secret gardens of red, brown and green macro-algae, the seaweeds of Downeast Maine. Kacie teaches the basics of seaweed harvesting and we have other teachers (listed below) for various of the sessions open to a larger public and homeschool community.
About Kacie Loparto
Kacie Loparto has worked as a seaweed harvester for several seaweed businesses between 2007 and 2015, on both coasts, both well established. She became began with an apprenticeship with Larch Hanson of Maine Seaweed Company, over several seasons becoming well versed in the work and rhythm of the wild seaweed harvest and drying. Extending her experience to the waters of the West coast Kacie worked with Pacific Wildcraft Seaweed. She assumed leadership roles helping the owners of these businesses train new workers in nearly every aspect of the seasonal and cyclical work. Today Kacie enjoys traveling three hours up the coast to Pembroke, ME to lead workshops in foraging the seven primary edible varieties of seaweed found on the Maine Coast. Although Kacie no longer sells seaweed as she once did under the guise of She Sells Seaweed there is nothing she enjoys more than walking along Maine’s piney coast smelling the salt air, wading into the water, gathering the beautiful seaweed.
